


Garlic and Strangewish

by Selden



Category: Portrait of Gerlach Flicke and Henry Strangwish - Gerlach Flicke (Painting)
Genre: Dubious Historical Accuracy, M/M, Piracy, painting in oils
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 00:21:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/pseuds/Selden
Summary: Or, the art of painting friendship (that is to say, love) in oils.





	Garlic and Strangewish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/gifts).



> Here's the [original painting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gerlach_Flicke;_Henry_Strangwish_\(or_Strangways\)_by_Gerlach_Flicke.jpg).
> 
> The legend above the image of Strangeways (on the right) reads: 'Strangwish, thus strangely, depictedis [sic] One prisoner, for thother, has done this / Gerlin, hath garnisht, for his delight This woorke whiche ye se, before youre sighte'. 
> 
> The Latin inscription above Flicke can be translated as 'Such was the face of Gerlach Flicke when he was a painter in the City of London. This he himself painted from a looking-glass for his dear friends. That they might have something by which to remember him after his death' (Hearn, ed., 1995, p. 120).

 

There is indeed a true and ready way to show the state of Friendship in lively oil paint, fresh as I stand here.

First, find your subject, or pattern, or model.

And, if you would follow my lead - then, get you to hell.

_Friendship, he says, like a schoolboy prating on Tully,_

_when he means the love which knows the weight of a man’s yard and the taste of his seed._

_Hell, he says, when he means the better parts of that most noble and excellent prison, the Fleet,_

_a fine and proper lodging for piratical rovers (I might say, myself)  
_

_or of seditious rebels against the crown_

_(I would not say, my friend. No rebel he, though some have called him such).  
_

_The Fleet, the Fleet - tis where we met  
_

_Not in the noisome brangling pit which might rightly be called, yes,  
_

_hell_

_(though what we name it, in truth, is Bartholomew Fair),_

_but the fine middling sort of lodgings, with a bed and a bolster and a quart of perkish claret wine or small beer per diem._

Hell, I say, which is to be haled along by sergeants with eyes like pewter buttons and mouths like the arses of incontinent cats.

Hell, I say, which is to be locked up with no recourse nor hope of pardon.

Hell, I say, which is a strange land with bad bread.

Hell, I say, which is a strange land with bad bread, where men laugh at you for a stranger when they hear the trick of your voice, though they chew English themselves like a rind of old cheese.

Hell, I say, which is to be shaken until you pay your jailors a garnish for your cell, which smells, I can affirm, of those same aforementioned incontinent cats.

Hell, I say, which is to be gawked at by prisoners until you pay them a garnish for the evening’s entertainment, capons and veal and good wine

              _bad wine_

and all. Hell, I say, which is to see your work, your finest work, all burnt.

_Tell me of it again._

It showed the young Sir Thomas before a window

_Sir Thomas Wyatt, as was. They are no sirs now, nor is there any more plain Thomas._

_So goes it when you rise against the queen.  
_

_They say he was brave, at the end._

He was a most patient subject. He sat still as you please in the best light, though I could have wished he had not wished to be drawn with his hand upon a Bible in English.

              _He had grown forward-minded, in religion._

He had listened overmuch to your ranters and word-mongers. I would have shown small smut marks on the margins, thus, as I showed broken glass in the window behind my lord Cranmer, for a sign of his sin. With fine ultramarine in the sky beyond, for truth, and blue bice in the glass, for lies, and ill-saying.

_You used blue bice for the ground of our portraits, did you not?_

I had no ultramarine, you know that well. You know also that it is the painting which gives its colours meaning, and a voice. A picture is a little world in which I can make richness poor, or poor blue bice more precious than the richest ultramarine. But, so. Enough.

              _Say more._

I have said full enough.

              _Say more, my friend._

What more is there to say? They burnt my picture of Sir Thomas, though it said more, I think, than Master Holbein’s spare and peckish profile ever did.

It was the best of me, until I came to hell.

              _Say more, then, friend, of hell._

Ah, hell. Where men must pay a garnish for each piece of bread

              _bad bread_

each piece of sad bad bread, and Angels slip away like quicksilver. They took my paints, as well.

              _I bought them back._

You did. You did.

For hell has devils too, leaning against the doorway, with hair all of fire.

_A daring, roving devil, this one. Was he fair?_

Must you hear it again?

              _Be kind, my friend. Be kind._

Yes, very fair. His hair was red, and grew in curls – the spirals that great Albrecht calls the snail-line, Englishing his word.

              _Enough of snails. More of this friendly devil, I thee pray._

Thee me at night, or when we’ve made thy ship. Your ship. We are but strangers in this inn, remember that.

_Met on the road, my blazing hair all quenched._

Good clean grey rain, gone silver on your fire. In prison you could always smell the Fleet, running with muck. Like an infected eye.

_You stayed within the Liberties of the Fleet. A street and more away from that fair stream._

Not far enough. Play me a song, I pray. My hands are cold. Although I wish to go, I’m sick to leave. Scrubbed off by England like a brush-stroke gone awry.

Yes, so. You played for me like that in prison. While you drank the wine my poor garnish had brought.

              _Raw wine it was too – though that’s hardly your fault._

You played, and sang. I did not know then that you roved at sea. Took ships

              _and men_

and Spanish gold.

_I’d take the whole world, if I could, you know. Give it to you in little_

like a picture

_blue, and red, and gold. The colours of ships burning on the water._

I mislike fire. And yet I long to see.

_Soon. Soon. We but await the tide._

They will not guess you bought my freedom?

_If they do – why, so. It is bought, now. And I may yet be useful to the crown. They’ll lock a devil up for show, and yet require his sword._

I thought you were a player, at first. A singer, perhaps. A gentleman’s younger son, caught by some cozener and full of debts.

              _Then I brought you your oils. A mirror, too._

A mirror, yes. You gave me my own face.

Then you tripped that blockish by-your-leave sergeant, and gave his head such a ring I’d wager that old sot feels it still.

I had thought he would break my wrist, before. My hands – you play. You know.

_I thought you were some merchant, come straight from Münster, gulled straight into gaol._

_Then I saw how you looked._

Looked?

              _Looked and saw. Merchants do not look so._

I could tell you the price of what I see, you know. So much blue bice, red lake, and verdigris. To make the flesh – carnation, as we say – red lake, a light vermilion, pink, white lead, burnt ochre. The shadows laid on green, or red, for cold or warm. The colours sweetened, so.

              _Intermixed_.

All smooth. As here, upon your hand, the pale red shifts into this pinker white. An edge of sad dull umber for this callus here. Dead white upon the nail.

              _Though I am quick._

I know.

_That callus – I send ships and men to die in salt. In blue-grey, ultramarine._

_The Spanish and their crosses. Lords and commoners._

_Fattish Welsh shore-huggers, carrying cheese and Irish cloth and fish._

I know.

              _You will not go back home? Not home to London. Home where you were born?_

In Osnabrück they burnt my sister for a witch. Play on, my friend. I will set sail with you.

              _You liked this tune, I think._

I did. It comes up round me in vermilion spires. I liked it in the Fleet, when you leaned up against my door, and smiled, and played.

_A strange tune, for a Strangewish._

Strangely depicted.

              _You have the picture here?_

I do, I do. Set down on board, wrapped up. To paint true friendship, find a strange devil in hell. Show their close clasping hands. Their smile.

              _I told you to paint in the frame between. You kept our hands unclasped._

To keep our secret close, our closeness secret. It was a fine thought. And, besides. Our hands, unseen, may clasp below the frame. A picture shows a world in bice and black, but there is more outside.

              _Leaning against the doorframe, smiling in._

At first, I thought you’d come to laugh at me. To call me Garlic, for Gerlach, and make mock upon my voice.

              _Garlic has its delights._

_Besides, we took some time to come to terms._

Some days, and nights.

_A new friend is like unto Must, or new wine – the which at length you shall drink with pleasure._

And you call me a prating schoolboy, when you have Englished Tully waiting on your tongue, like

              _like fine wine?_

like that bold devil’s smile.

Come. Show me your ship.

              _It’s true, the tide must surely now have turned._

_Give me your hand, Gerlach. Its red and quick-white, and the darker shadow at the wrist.  
_

The shadow of your kiss. Give me one now, in secret here behind the doorway, like a frame.

Yes.

Like a touch of bright oil, that keeps and stays, despite the English rain.

              _Despite the grey. There's red. There's warm. Come quickly, now._

_For we have far to go._

And things to see, my friend.

              _And things to see._

 

 


End file.
